Guide strips which are securable to a floor for attaching and supporting heating wire circuits on a sub floor structure are known. An example of such floor heating system is described in Applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 7,250,570 issued Jul. 31, 2007. With these systems the wire retaining strips are secured to the sub-floor surface which, if made of wood, is usually constituted by two layers of sheeting material, such as plywood sheeting, which are secured by means of screws to prevent movement of the sub-floor. The rigid sub-floor supports a cement slurry as well as the covering material thereover, usually ceramic tiles, and its rigidity is required to prevent the cement to crack or to cause the electric wires to break due to movement.
A disadvantage of these known systems is that there is a need to solidify the sub-flooring which is costly in material and installation time. There is also a further need to provide different trade people to complete the entire construction of the radiant heated floor. After the sub-floor is constructed by a carpenter, another tradesman installs the heating cable guide strips onto the floor and then lays the heating wires onto the floor and attaches them to the guide strips. Another tradesman is then required to apply the cementitious slurry over the heating wire and the interval between the installation of the wire and the pouring of the slurry may take several days leaving the wires exposed to other tradesmen to walk and this often damages the wired circuits. It is common to cover the set dried cementitious slurry with ceramic tiles and a further tradesman is needed to install the tiles onto the set concrete floor. Accordingly, as can be seen, this installation is very time consuming and expensive and exposes the heating wires to damage.